


The Five Stages

by swaggietrash



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: ... it's sort of handplates, F/M, Gen, Handplates, Heavy Angst, M/M, Magic, Murder, My First Fanfic, Reader-Insert, Souls, Suicide Attempt, Suicide mention, Will add tags as I go, buckle in boys, this will be a really messed up ship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 14:33:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14875589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swaggietrash/pseuds/swaggietrash
Summary: You ignore him as the body ascends and transforms into something that would no longer haunt you as you keep moving, going out the front door and into the world.--Death is something that transcends physicality. It takes flight on the wings of inevitability and goes somewhere far away, where no mortal hands can reach. The ending of something  doesn't necessarily mean the beginning of something else; it is just that. An end.This story focuses on YOU as you deal with the inevitability of the end. How your end has somehow involved monsters, skeletons, a sterilized lab and blood that never seems to wash off your hands, well. That's a story for you to tell, isn't it?





	The Five Stages

\--

grief -- ;

 _something_ to be **used**.

\--

The streams of water slipping past your fingers down onto the bottom of the metal sink was all you could focus on. Breathing was an afterthought, lost within the spinning, echoing whirlwind of your thoughts and feelings. Head feeling hot, goosebumps rose up along your scalp, making you feel like you were drowning in the sensations of having emotions, but not truly feeling them. It was like balancing on a thin tight rope, the edges of your mental state burning and failing.

Despite the overwhelming sense that everything was shutting down, that _you_ were shutting down, you continued to breathe. The sensation of water cascading down the yawning emptiness between your fingers kept persisting, as did the loud sounds of your next-door neighbors’ wild fuck in the shower on the other side of the wall.

Despite the feeling of falling to pieces, nothing was changing. Nothing was different.

Tired eyes were staring back at you in the mirror, framed by familiar features that felt everything but familiar in that moment. Was that really your nose? Your lips, eye bags, hair, jawline? The water is steaming, billowing up around your face, but even though your fingers are an angry shade of red, you can’t feel anything. Breathing still steady and calm, you watch as your eyes blink once, twice, in the mirror before your gaze dragged back towards the small window in your bathroom.

A black abyss stares back, and the exhaustion that weighs down every one of your joints began to nag at you. Every single one of your nerves was firing off, begging your brain to respond, but there was nothing but static. Silence. An aching sense of calm in the eye of the storm, something that wouldn’t fade, no matter how loud your emotions are.

Slowly pulling back from the steaming sink, everything felt cold. Gaze dragging to the bathroom door, a reddened and burned hand pushed it open to reveal a worn hallway. Stains covered the carpet, and cracks littered the walls. It was dark, the only source coming from the bathroom behind you, but it didn’t hinder your eyesight. Every step seemed to be made by someone else, a higher power perhaps, guiding you through your shitty little apartment.

Ears ringing due to the silence, you took in the bills that had piled up on the kitchen table, pausing to take in the same four walls you’ve stared at for the past 8 months. The second tile from the floor on the wall to your right still had that crack in it, the dirty grime ground into the floor still wouldn’t be cleaned up, and the second chair at the table was still broken from two months ago. Hands ghosting over the bills, names and numbers passed by your eyes without your brain truly registering it.

What use did you have for cell phone bills and credit card companies? You pawned your old phone off two weeks ago to make rent, and you’ve never owned a credit card. Not having any sort of identification did that. It was always easier to steal someone else’s credit card information than to figure out what you were.

Breathe in, breathe out. Your ears don’t hear anything else but static, echoing and crawling up your back. The mail slips through your burnt hands and spilled onto the floor, but your body is a statue. Staring down at the fallen soldiers for what feels like an eternity, when you blink, the ink blurs before your eyes and becomes irrelevant. You move on, pulling your dead weight body behind you like some sort of horrific beast on a chain.

Down from the kitchen is the small living room, filled with nothing but a shitty TV balanced on a cardboard box, a couple discarded condom wrappers, and a half-filled bottle of water. Looking upwards, you silently confirm that, yes, the ceiling is still steadily leaking, staining your carpet an off-brown shade. The water had soaked into the ceiling, stretching out in spiderweb like motions that were almost sort of pretty to look at.

It reminds you of those marble tiles located downtown in front of important government buildings. They were awful to sleep on, even worse to fall on. Hand subconsciously rubbing your left elbow, you keep moving.

Down another hallway, peek into the bedroom you had shared with your clients many times over. Eyes passing over the body of the man you just killed, you ignore him as the body ascends and transforms into something that would no longer haunt you as you keep moving, going out the front door and into the world.

\--

The city was always bustling, in some way or another. Everyone was always busy with something, whether it was angrily honking at a parked car, texting rapidly on their phone, snapping photos of the fight happening in the alleyway, or sitting on a bench eating two hour old churros, everyone was always moving. It made you feel like an outsider with how slow you seemed to move. Bodies passed by you in a blur as you focus every scrap of energy you have on putting one foot in front of the other, not caring where you went, as long as it was far from where you came.

Living in one of the biggest cities located at the base of Mount Ebott had its perks; no one gave a shit who you were or what you were doing. It was a city filled to the brim of people from all different sorts of backgrounds, histories, ethnicities, and orientations. A hodgepodge of people and emotions, creating an electric sort of energy in the air.

Perhaps, that’s why you had originally been drawn to the city, traveling tediously from state to state until you reached Ebott City. The city itself was beautiful, filled with quaint little neighborhoods, huge skyscrapers, little businesses tucked into every open corner, and gorgeous yellow flowers decorating practically every surface. All those months ago, you had thought that, perhaps, the reason why you were drawn here was for a chance to restart. For a chance to change.

Walking down a battered sidewalk, you kept your head up and your eyes forward as you slowly made your way towards the bridge. The bridge itself was built over one of the many rivers that flowed through the city, and wasn’t one of the bigger, more extravagant ones.

It is plain, colored an orangey sort of shade, with a two lane road on it and street lights lining the sides. The river running below it wasn’t large, but it wasn’t small either; 40 feet deep and easily a football field in length.

However, what it lacked in decoration, it made up for with the view it provided. When standing in the center of the bridge, Mount Ebott could be seen directly, with the river running right to it’s base. When it was nighttime, like it was currently, the moonlight would reflect in the water and off the mountain itself, making it almost appear magical, glowing white with the  moonlight and city lights reflecting in the river’s inky depths.

Magic. Hah. Imagine _that_.

As you continued your journey to the bridge, you reflect quietly upon the myths that had also drawn you to Mount Ebott. Stories of people disappearing for good, never to be found or heard of again… Wouldn’t it be nice, to be transported somewhere else? Maybe even be something, someone, _anyone_ else?

No bodies were ever recovered, either. Children, hell, even some adults had gone up into the mountain, whether as runaways or merely for research (a certain case of a grad student working on his master’s in environmental science working on his practical research disappearing popped into your head) and had never come back down.

Nothing of theirs could ever be found, either; it was always as if they had just been erased from existence. Ebott City Police had always done their best to find them, and search and rescue teams still worked on finding them, even years after the disappearances.

It was 2018, though, and the last disappearance was in 1974. Some whispered that these people were transported to another dimension, while others were firm believers that the disappearances were clearly because aliens were real and abducting people. You were leaning more towards the theory that there was an original serial killer, then a couple copy cats after him that had taken these people away. However, at the end of the day, it really didn’t matter to you why they had disappeared, or even how.

The water was an angry torrent, far below your feet. The static in your ears had faded, and the beer bottle in your right hand dropped and shattered on the concrete next to your hand. Staring at the smudged version of Mount Ebott far, far away from you, hot tears cascaded down your cheeks as you tried your best to remain distant.

When did your feet carry you onto the bridge? Your toes, bare of any sort of protection besides the worn and torn socks you wore, curled against the hard edge of concrete. The gritty texture was digging into your flesh through the socks, and you could feel the chill seeping up your leg through the hole in your sock.

There was a gasp and a sound of someone behind you screaming, begging, as your foot hovered over the empty space between you and the rushing water down below. Sirens and lights flashed, the whole world seeming to spin as people tried their best to reach you.

Balanced precariously on the edge of the bridge, your hands burnt from the water and your eyes empty and haunting and pleading for someone, something to release you. Release you from the reality that had become around you, release you from the god that didn’t exist and controlled every aspect of your life. Release you from the god that you had killed back in your apartment in a desperate attempt to finally be free in retribution for tearing your angel wings to shreds.

A desperate sort of gasp crawled its way up your throat and out your mouth, and you were shaking without really knowing why. Eyes hopelessly reaching for the sight of Mount Ebott so very far away, the sights and sounds around you seemed to almost be so strong that they became white noise.

It was nothing but you, the mountain, and your dreams. Your hopes that wherever those people had ended up, that it was better than here. That wherever people go when they die, you won’t find him there.

That wherever you’ll end up, people won’t hurt, or cry, or have to beg to survive. A hand brushed your back, and without looking back, you let the wind carry you off the ledge and towards your destiny. Wind caught in your clothes, and you finally closed your eyes as you hurtled down towards the water.

You fell.

And fell.

And fell.

And you woke up.

**Author's Note:**

> HI YALL
> 
> sorta realized i should have put, like, some sort of a summary at the end. because lord knows my writing is hard to follow. i wrote this purposefully to be disorienting, to fully reflect reader's current mental state. i wanted this to feel emotional, even though theres no words to describe how intense or what the emotion even is.
> 
> but, uh, anyways. basically, reader lives in a shitty rundown apartment. he killed someone there who he believed had him trapped and was controlling him (more details will surface on who this man is soon!!), and this is the direct aftermath of that. he washes his hand in his sink, walks through his apartment to reflect on what he had done, and left the body there and door unlocked. after walking through ebott city, he reaches a bridge thats over one of the many rivers leading up to mount ebott's base. he jumps off the bridge after standing there for a while, and then wakes up somewhere else at the end. 
> 
> hope that clears any possible confusion!
> 
> i dont really have a tumblr. but i DO have an instagram! feel free to hmu @swaggietrash on IG!


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